Before the Law

The Triumph of Clarence Thomas and the slandering of Anita Hill
was the triumph of democracy. By democracy here we mean the system
that rules America today - the system where the majority get a
chance to rephrase the orders issued by the system. Every position
the TV mentioned in the Thomas confirmation debates served a faction
of the rulers.

Clarence Thomas is a black man who has gotten to the top of the
ruling class by mouthing conservative slogans that, among other
things, are thinly veiled calls to keep most blacks on the lowest
rungs of this society.

During his quest for approval as supreme court justice, the liberals
of the US Senate supposedly did their best to slander this man.
These senators could not denounce him as a hollow, unprincipled
criminal riding to the top on borrowed, shoddy ideology. They
are the same. Every senator today mouths the slogans put in their
mouths by their demographers and corporate lobbyists.

Still, information damaging to this man's public image could be
easily be found. It seems Thomas sexually harassed all of his
female underlings during the period when he served as chair of
the US Equal Opportunities Commission and one was brought in to
testify against him.

But since the ruling consensus favored Judge Thomas, it was easy
for the voice of television to summarily dismiss Anita Hill for
daring to even bring this up.

The American public was thus treated to a televised circus of
lies and misdirection. Anita Hill was handed her revenge by the
pre-existing balance of forces in the Senate with no real fight
taking place. The "dirty tricks" used by Bush were no
more and no less than what could have been expected. The Thomas/Hill
hearings were a replay of the set-up when a senate subcommittee
allowed Oliver North to speak at length in uniform. Every committee
member knew that he was, among other things, impersonating an
officer since he was no longer in the services. The "adversarial
liberal" committee members were thus party to manufacturing
his cardboard hero image; as they did their part in the ruling
class agreement to limit the "Iran-Contra" scandal.

The most absurd slanders were thrown at professor Hill. The claim
that she made up her story using pornographic novels was silly
and the claim that she was crazy was simply made up. But the media
let the Senators throw these things at her.

Liberal senators put up a limp fight at best, selling Thomas'
confirmation for some considerations or other. Spy magazine wrote
that Joseph Biden and Charles Grasley were threatened with race-baiting
editorials and electoral advertisement but there's likely another
story behind this also.

Justice

The Thomas hearings were signs of our time. That is, they had
one lie packed inside another. The feminist commentators who complain
about the lack of justice here are as confused the spectators
who passively watched the hearings.

No one can claim that what happened is new or unfair by itself.
The whole game is well known. Regardless of how inflammatory the
senate's treatment of professor Hill and women in general was,
we must remember the first law of television. "Television
does not make anyone do anything. It only forms passive opinions."
This law derives from the condition of television. Rather than
being the beginning of "simulated reality," television
is right now a true reality for the mind/body. But it is exactly
an experience of body carriage dissociation. The neck and back
slump. The mind and body are detached. The attention wanders through
different stimuli without being able to react.

Milli Vanilli Morality

No one should be surprise that the television audience accepted
the treatment of Anita Hill. Watching television at all means
that you accept the reality it projects. The narrow eye of television
was easily capable of making the audience only think about certain
possibilities. Like Milli-Vanilli, Anita Hill became just another
star victim.

Fab and Rob of Milli Vanilli were two image creators condemned
as imposters after they won a grammy for songs that they had no
hand in making. But they did little different than the many rock
stars such as Paula Abdul who works with a computer voice processor
changing the characteristics of her voice entirely. The point
of having these unfortunate characters not sing on "their"
album had little to do with their singing abilities. Their imposture
gave their producer the power to show them up at any time they
rebelled. Puppets benefit a puppet master.

This system naturally creates star victims like Rob, Fab or Anita
Hill. The world of the media feels totally false. Those who waste
their lives just watching TV are very ready to tear up whatever
is shown them. But the cheated feeling most people get winds-up
being vented on a media-chosen victim. Unconscious misery can
be focused in any direction the media chooses.

The star victim is the perfect target, since they can be set up
by the media using true events as the backdrop. The subjective
feelings of the viewers are all that matter here and the attention
of a passive viewer can easily be pointed in a calculated direction.
This allows the producers, directors and behind the scenes image
makes to manipulated the famous in any direction they want.

Fab and Rob had their fate sealed when they accepted their only
chance fame - in the Milli Vanilli production process. Anita Hill
and the Kennedy rape victim were each slandered in the only forum
they were given to tell their side of the stories.

Star victim is the main role given to women and minorities within
the all-powerful stage show of today's society. The star victim
ideally represents the real victims needed by this society. Some
black pop stars, a society woman, a black boxer and a black woman
college professor were the latest of these victims - a mix that
combined hatred of the rich and powerful with sexism and racism.
The hatred is brewed specially to create admiration for the successful
rapists of this society. The paper quoted one woman fan of Mr.
Kennedy-Smith as saying "she knew she wanted to have sex
with when she into that house..."

Star victims are a distorted representation of the continuous
victimization of most people in real life. Anita Hill and the
woman referred to as the "Kennedy rape victim" were
elevated to celebrity status simply so that they could receive
this treatment.

It doesn't matter which way the battle goes. It doesn't really
matter who the real good guys are. If Mike Tyson goes to prison
for rape while William Kennedy Smith gets off, the message is
clear. All of the characters we see in the media are shoddy enough
that we feel contempt for whichever one winds up going down. The
media focuses our attention and thus our rage. This is how the
spectacle enforces the dividing up of the oppressed.

A passive spectator is just as eager to see Tyson go down as the
"Kennedy Rape Victim." (This is the wonderful appeal
of professional sports.)

This was all accomplished using the truth and democracy. After
the various recent public trials, media experts have been crowing
about how effective they are in gaining acceptance for the authorities'
decisions. "Everyone" saw the dramas and the victory
trumpeted by the media was that women did not rise up and string
up newscasters on telephone poles.

Multi-deception

The star-victim scheme is characteristic of all the manipulations
that hide the total system from questioning. With polls and elections,
the average person can passively participate in national decisions;
in choosing issues, stars, and hit songs. But an opaque wall of
lies separates these decisions from the order of our daily lives.
Most average people have no time to consider all the ways a "national
consensus" becomes the change in the behavior of the cops
on the corner.

Before Anita Hill was given the media bird, some feminist labor
relations experts got a small media spot-light. They said the
Thomas hearings' focus on sexual harassment would give women some
power to fight back against it.

Lobbying won't make the courts enforce lawsuits against sexual
harassment. Just as official civil rights did nothing for Rodney
King when he was pulled over by the cops, legalities of the work
place count for little in most workplaces.

Being a worker subjects anyone to continuous harassment of many
sorts. In America's patriarchal society, sexual harassment is
standard fare. But it is virtually impossible for a working class
woman to sue her boss.

In a high level of the federal bureaucracy, maybe a woman could
prove her boss didn't follow the correct procedure if he fired
her for not sleeping with him. But if a woman is fired for telling
her boss to buzz off at a deli, she couldn't prove he was acting
any differently than when he fired anyone else for any other arbitrary
reason.

Mass media, pluralism, propaganda, the public's need to know and
democracy are all only variations on each other. You cannot attribute
the gross, shabby actions of today to a deformed system. This
is a system that works very well.

We are in a period of wholesale defeat for all working people
today. The defeat is a result of workers letting the government
choose their reforms for them. From social security and welfare
to anti-discrimination legislation, the government has chosen
a terrain where one victim can be played against another.

The tears of those who felt pulled different ways by the supreme
court nomination of an ultra-conservative black man merely revealed
the shoddy reasoning that has permeated "affirmative action."

Like most reforms done by the Federal Government, affirmative
action was designed to irritate and annoy all those who did not
immediately benefit. The system still holds most women and minorities
back while affirmative action promotes a few tokens to position
where they are vulnerable to counter-attack.